This sounds like breaking news since the trademark for "Zoosh" was only registered on Feb. 1, 2011 and the patent applications have yet to be published (meaning they were filed after Dec. 21, 2009). I wonder if children (with better high frequency hearing that adults) will be annoyed by these high frequency short distance communications. Certainly the sounds are in the audible range of humans - and need to stay within the operating frequencies of the telecommunications devices.

Just on the surface, it appears to be an easy target for hackers, how hard can it be to rig devices for audio capture and playback of captured data streams?
It makes me wonder how strong and tamper-proof could be an audio-based encoding, in order to prevent hacking? Since the user-tolerable transaction times may place limits on packet size and the encoding-rates required.

It's better because with a simple app download all the older smartphones could support it without waiting for a 2-3 yr refresh cycle. Downside... it's probably not as reliable and you'd also have irate customers waiting in line behind someone that can't complete his transaction because he's forgotten his phone is on silent or the volume is set too low.

What an interesting story. It really sounds like a very powerful idea. But since this is a very innovative approach, I bet it will be filled with questions and a very cautious approack from the big banks and some other companies seeking security.
One question that pops on mind is... if they are using the mobile phone's already built-in speakers and mics wouldn't using such devices under such abnormal frequencies reduce the 'life' of the devices? what is Naratte going to answer that question? I'd be interested to know that since one thing is to test for functionality but other is to test for durability and perhaps they even should since in the future, somebody could sue them saying they are the cause for their phone failure... well, that is of course if they make a good license freeing them from all responsability. And then... would you use such "at you're own risk" scheme?

This is an important point. Transaction support is a very "top-heavy" application which includes authentication, encryption, errorproofing, etc. Whether that happens over RF or audio physical transport would seem to be a relatively minor detail.
Larry M.